a few style changes and simplifications

A few hopefully uncontroversial style changes. 

There is one intentional behavior change: https://github.com/jerrinot/hazelcast/commit/df21d2fe534367bf5d49c0e7d965aa7834fb1d12#diff-a1de41cc4f4fb4730115404342a6a524L85 I assume it was a type as the "e" variable is always null.